Scientists may have caught the blind flush of two blinds Neutron stars Colliding to form a strange magnetic star.
The first sign of a huge event was a gamma-ray beacon that appeared in telescope data on May 22, asking astronomers to assemble their best devices. That answer was important: Scientists believe Gamma-rays erupt Normally neutron stars collide so they are eager to see as many scenes as possible of such fireworks. But as soon as the observations came, the researchers realized that something was amiss: this flash contained more infrared light than predicted, 10 times more. Scientists behind the new research think that anomalies mean that crashes can cause something unexpected.
“These observations do not fit the traditional explanations for short gamma-ray explosions,” said Wen-fi Fong, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Illinois and a leading author on new research. Said in a statement. “Looking at what we know about radio and X-rays from this explosion, it doesn’t match.”
Related: Gamma-ray Universe: Photos by NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope
Astronomers used a variety of features in space to study applications, including NASA’s Swift Observatory, a very large array in New Mexico, and the Cake Observatory in Hawaii, but it was Hubble Space Telescope Who discovered extremely bright infrared radiation from the explosion that told scientists that something particularly strange was happening.
“Hubble’s observations were made to detect infrared emissions that result from the formation of heavy elements such as gold, platinum and uranium – Neutron star collision“Neutron stars are superdress fossils of exploded stars, and bright objects are called dark objects,” said Edo Berger, an astronomer at the Center for Astronomy jointly run by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution, and co-author on the new research.
“Surprisingly, we’ve got brighter infrared emissions than we expected, indicating that there’s extra energy radiation input from the monitor that is a remnant of the merger,” Berge said. “The fact that we see this infrared emission, and it’s so bright that short gamma-rays erupt is made up of neutron star collisions, but surprisingly it can’t be the result of collisions. Black hole, But probably. Magnets. “
a Magnets There is a cosmic curiosity, an unusual class of supermagnetic neutron stars. But scientists have long thought about how a magnet becomes a magnet, so it is especially valuable for scientists to observe the phenomenon of possible formation.
“We know that magnets exist because we see them in our galaxy,” Fong said in another statement. “We think that most of them are formed in the explosive death of large stars, leaving behind these highly magnetic neutron stars. However, it is possible that the neutron star merger has a small fractional form. We have never seen evidence of this, let alone In infrared light, this makes the discovery special. “
And this time, the researchers were able to achieve an early enough view of the explosion to capture the fading infrared peak in all its glory.
“Surprisingly, Hubble was only able to take an image three days after the explosion,” Fong said. “Against a static source, you need a second observation to prove that the merger associated with the merger is equivalent. When we looked at Hubble again for 16 days and 55 days, we knew that we not only caught the fusion source, but we also found it very unusual. The thing was found. “
The research is described in a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal. (Nov. 12) and is available for reading on the preprint server arXiv.org.
Email Meghan Bartel at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us On Twitter @speed.com and Facebook.
